for blue skies I forgive you
by zoe alice
Summary: When did you get everyone to fall in love with you, Miss Jones? Human Nature/Family of Blood AU, Ten/Martha, one-shot.


**for nativehueofresolution on tumblr. what is a joan redfern, anyway?**

* * *

They should leave now. They've said their goodbyes and Tim waits to see them off. The boy is the last witness to the sorry mess the Doctor has made of a life, and his cheek is probably still warm from Martha's kiss. He'll remember that kiss, the Doctor is certain. Both of them lock their gazes on her as she stands in the TARDIS doorframe. What she's looking at or for, the Doctor can't tell—not either of them. She blinks away mist from her eyelashes.

When did you get everyone to fall in love with you, Miss Jones?

(A few mornings ago, when she opened your shades and the light glowed around her. You just knew. Well, no, he knew. John stammered his way through several good mornings. Later she caught him drawing her, forgetting these were student papers.)

Fictions in love with fictions. Nothing more.

(He kissed her once, gently enough that she could easily break away. And did, because it didn't feel right. And because the Doctor had been John Smith, who wasn't real, he'd thought only of the inhibitions of John Smith's little world. But in the end, John-Smith-who-wasn't-real almost gave up the universe to stay with Martha Jones, scullery-maid-who-wasn't.

Not that it would have done any good, of course. John dreamed of having Martha at his side, but all those dreams had brought him back to the Doctor. Who is real.)

They should really, really leave now.

Martha closes the door at long last, wordless. She walks back the console with her arms folded and the corners of her lips deep in a frown. What do you really want, Miss Jones? The time rotor stands between them.

"So you would've said anything," the Doctor blurts out. "To get me to change. _Anything_, honestly?" He tries to play the question off as a joke, maybe even an impressed one, but something presses on his chest too hard to laugh.

Martha's shoulders rise and fall. "You listened, didn't you? You chose to change."

You broke his heart, the Doctor wants to say. You could have broken two. But what's he supposed to scold her for, being careless with him? She cared more than he did. After everything he's said and not said to her... No wonder his chest is caving.

"You know, that means... he was braver than you in the end. That ordinary man," Martha says. Her dark eyes drift shy of him. "He chose to die."

(And you saunter away. The Doctor who is real, a bloodied old soldier.)

What if he tells her that he would give almost anything to be brave enough to keep what John wanted? Almost, almost. Anything but shriveling back down into John, whose kiss had been too little. John, brave? He died, yes, but what could he have lived for?

All the Doctor says is "But you didn't love him back."

After just the right, neutral pause, Martha agrees, "No, I didn't," and she still isn't looking at him; _why _won't she look at him? Without thinking, the Doctor rounds the console and closes his hand over her forearm. His grip is firm enough to feel the muscles of her arm. Martha glances up, and her calm expression cracks.

He knows that look. He knows more about her than he pretended before he was John. (Who couldn't escape not being real, no, but was, in some sense, free. There was that.) Martha had looked at him like this when she cupped her hands and let him unspool a key and chain into them. Here he is, pulling that slender chain to reel her closer. It isn't fair to her. What is he supposed to say? 'Come with me'? He dragged her here and nearly got her killed, again, and she pulled him from the brink, always. The weight settles on his lungs, crushing. He can't breathe and he needs air, he needs—

Martha shivers and unzips her wet jacket with one deft stroke. The Doctor eases it the rest of the way off her shoulders and brushes her bare arm; his fingertips travel from the strap of her tank top down to the outline of her tattoo. Little butterfly survived being stepped on.

Martha leans into the curve of his palm as his free hand finds her damp hair and cups the back of her head. The Doctor is a rickety construction of matchstick bones and he'll fall apart any minute, but first he will bend every inch of his frame out of shape to meet her.

His chapped lips and her warm mouth connect. They stop to breathe and start again. They're a slow, tender mess. "Look at me," the Doctor murmurs, even though his eyes are still closed. Her head tilts in his hand. He hopes she's smiling.

"Is it right? The one thing he did right, Martha—"

She hushes him with another dizzying kiss and, after she lets up again, stretches on tiptoe to press her forehead against his. Her touch orients him somewhere between earthbound human and starbound wanderer.

"You never told me what to do if he fell in love," she finally says, breathless. If it's an apology, it shouldn't be.

"I'll—I can figure it out. Right now."

Martha releases a short laugh. "Why?"

Because... you wouldn't have stayed with him, so what did he give up by dying? Not you. _Please_, not you.

"I'd like to start again, you and me. If you can forgive me."

His hearts pound. Her hand is on the crook of his neck, her thumb against the pulse in his jaw, so she must be able to feel it. Martha's smile shows her teeth. "I'll let you know."

He whines, "Oh, the suspense'll kill—" and then she pulls him back down to her lips. The Doctor's busy mind orbits a thousand suns every second, and all of them are her.

::

Tim probably still carries the memory of Martha Jones's kiss as much as any worn-down fob watch. The Doctor expects no less of him.

The memorial service is all but silent; the vicar speaks distantly. When Martha smoothes the poppy on the Doctor's lapel, her heat washes through him.

I forgive you, she mouths.

For all of it, he hopes. The Doctor hooks her in one bony arm and tucks her head under his chin until the last word is spoken.


End file.
